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The house had been passed down through the family for generations, from parent to child since it was first built centuries ago. It was always tended to so that it survived to be given to the next child, sometimes cared for even more than the children who would come to possess it.
In the back of the house, however, stood an abandoned church. It wasn't certain whether it was built before or after the house, nor could you find any mention of it in the family history, but it had to be decades old. The lights still worked inside of it, but the floor tiles were cracked, half buried under the ground they once covered. The old stained glass windows were shattered, and parts of the walls were falling out. The doors had long since been removed thrown to either side of the building and left there to rot.
The first time John steps inside the church, he's seven years old, and he doesn't know what he's getting himself into when does.
Black vines stretch across the inside of the church. They start at a pristine marble altar, reaching out towards the door as though they're trying to escape, but then stopping just short of the doorway. Something stirs from behind the altar, its movements heard as whispers.
"Hello?" John calls out, standing on his toes to try and see what's there. He stumbles and almost falls, the echo of his shoe hitting the tiles awakening something inside the church.
John gasps as the thing rises from behind the altar. It comes to John in the shape of a man, but its face and body shift from one form to another like it can't decide on what to look like. It speaks to John, its words incoherent, voice coming out like smoke, choking him. He screams and his mother runs to him, scoops him in her arms and runs out as fast as she can, never looking back.
After that, John doesn't go near the church anymore. He gets older, his mother has more children, the church continues to fall apart, and nobody touches it for almost a decade.
When his mother is pregnant with her fifth child, she goes to the church in the middle of the night with only a candle to guide her. John sees the light from his bedroom window, runs outside as fast as he can to try and stop her, but by the time he gets to her, the thing is already there. It still looks like his father, but it has dark black eyes, shining like coal, and smiles in a way his apathetic father never has.
"Eleanor," he sneers, voice still like smoke, sending a chill down John's spine.
His mother shudders as he speaks, hands resting on her stomach. "I want to make a deal," she says, just above audible, and the thing smiles even wider.
"So," he produces a cigarette from thin air, already lit, "you've heard of me."
"You're a god, aren't you? The kind you make deals with?" She coughs as he blows smoke in her face, but keeps staring at him all the same.
"I applaud you for not being as stupid as the others that have married into this family. Now, what could I do for you? More importantly, what could you do for me? " He asks, leaning down closer to her.
She leans back in the pew, blinking up at him, mouth curled into a frown. "Why do you look like that?" John steps closer, not inside the church but close, close enough to see if either of them looked.
"You're not the only one to come here, you know. Your husband came here too once, seventeen years ago, and asked me to make you love him back. I agreed of course, he was so desperate, and in return he gave me his humanity, the one thing you loved about him in the first place."
"He asked you for my heart?" She looks away from him, hand covering her chest.
The god rolls his father's eyes, takes another drag from the cigarette and exhaling as he says, "Maybe you are as stupid as the others."
"Does that mean my love for my husband is fake? Why did he ask in the first place?"
These questions go unanswered as the god gets more annoyed, throws his cigarette in the corner and gets three inches from her face.
"Would you like to give me something for an answer, or are you here for a more important reason?" His eyes dart down to her stomach, where her hands are cradling the child yet to be born.
John's mother blinks tears from her eyes. "Right. My doctor says that this child should have died long ago, and that even if she does live to be born, she might die any day. I want my daughter to be healthy, to grow up and get to live her life how she chooses."
"I can do that," he shrugs. "What would you be willing to give me?"
"Anything."
The god looks John in the eye as he asks, "How about your life?"
As the words come out of his mouth, John opens his to scream, to tell her that she shouldn't, but nothing comes out. The god stares him down harder, and tears prick at his eyes, breath caught in his throat. His mother is crying now, but she nods, whispers her agreement and offers her hand to him.
"Pleasure doing business with you," he says, shaking her hand. He turns from her, letting John breathe again, and walks up to altar. He disappears behind it, vanishing into thin air.
John sprints back into his house, up the stairs to his room, locking the door behind him. He closes all the curtains, hiding the view of that church. He crawls under the covers, trying to erase everything he heard, trying to forget the deal his mother made, trying to not think about what the deal means .
His baby sister is born healthy, exactly like the god said she would be. John sees her for the first time a few minutes after she is born, but can't focus on her because he sees his mother. She's lying in her hospital bed, half asleep, smiling through her tears, but her eyes are dark. The emerald green she's passed on to her children have become dark, shining, like the god's.
It's hard to notice at first. She starts forgetting simple things, like John's birthday or where they keep the sugar. Her father thinks nothing of it, responds with what he knows, lets John remind her of small details like their birthdays or Martha's favorite flavor of ice cream. She smiles and kisses his forehead, like an apology for the deal she made.
When she starts forgetting their names, John knows she doesn't have much time left. He sits with her in the backyard, drinking lemonade and introducing himself to her, telling her who his siblings are, explaining who his father is. She finds her own life interesting, writes it all down as though she hasn't lived it. John cries sometimes when he talks to her, but never lets his mother ask about it, because every second they spend on him is a second of her life wasted.
Three weeks pass, and by then his mother can barely remember anything at all. She gets sick, starting with a cough and escalating into something so severe she can't even walk. She's forced to stay in bed, John and his siblings not allowed in. Her father watches over her instead, but he treats it more like an obligation than a genuine concern.
His mother dies on a Sunday morning, almost a month after his sister is born. She left her bedroom without John's father knowing, stepped into the church and onto the altar, folded her hands over her stomach and held up her end of the deal. John found her, went outside to see if she was waiting at the table for him, only to see her body in the doorway of the church.
He doesn't run, knowing that nothing he can do will save her, not willing to waste time on false hope. He steps across the church, but the god doesn't show up, perhaps because he knows John has nothing to give.
John's father closes off the church after that, boards up the doors and forbids John and his siblings from ever going in. But his father is no god and so the boards are ripped off one night, left in splintered pieces in front of the door, a warning. His father doesn't try to put them back up, understands what it means, refuses to even go in the back of the house in fear of the god coming out. That doesn't stop him from allowing his children to go out there, and John wonders what kind of man that makes him.
They struggle to live without their mother, but they get by. John graduates high school and goes off to college, stays as close to home as possible so he could always come home when he has to. His father tells him it's not smart, that he has offers from other schools that would benefit him more than the one he chose. John, of course, doesn't listen.
He comes home for Thanksgiving in his first year of college, washing dishes in his kitchen while his siblings are in the backyard playing. His father is still in his office, almost never leaves, and the nanny is standing towards him trying to wipe the tears from his brother's face as she patches up his skinned knee. His other brother is sitting next to him, watching the nanny with wide eyes, but John isn't paying attention to them.
Eleanor Laurens, as bright and healthy as the day she made the deal, stands in the doorway of the church. Her smile is kind but her eyes are wicked as she gazes down and Mary, just three years old, who stares back up at her, astounded at seeing her mother for the first time in her young life.
John doesn't waste any time. He rushes out of the kitchen, almost rips the sliding door out trying to get it to open, jumps clear over the fence that surrounds the church, but finds himself stopping dead in his tracks at the god's feet.
The god sees him and grins, menacing, glint in his mother's eyes. "You're too late, Jacky," he says. James screams from the porch as their nanny drops dead at his feet and the god vanishes. Mary starts crying, reaching out to where the god once was and trying to get it to come back. John picks her up, carries her out and sets her down in the grass.
Later that night, he takes a candle like his mother had, crosses the yard and into the church. He doesn't do anything, just stands there, and the lights switch on themselves, the god appearing from behind the altar.
"You're not here to make a deal," the god guesses, lifting a cigarette to his lips. Every other part of him seems to be shifting except his mouth, which stays in place just for the purpose of smoking.
"What did Mary ask for?" John questions. The god exhales through his teeth as his lips curl upwards. He changes form, back into his mother, her face shifting over his. The cigarette looks out of place as it's held in between her fingers, looks worse when the god uses her mouth to take another drag from it.
"She asked for what most greedy little half orphans would want. She asked to meet her mother," it explains, blowing smoke in John's face. He chokes and coughs, blows out the candle, walks back home. He sits in his bed, stomach churning, sick over what Mary did, what the god said, what he called them . It sits heavy on John's chest like a paperweight, like guilt.
This isn't the last encounter John's siblings have with the god. Mary stayed away, not quick to forget the nanny and the deal she made when she was just a toddler.
Two months before John graduates college, James jumps off of the church roof and cracks his head open on the ground. John gets home as soon as he can, spends all of his time with James until his father tells him to go home, get some rest , but the look in his eyes as he says it tells John what he really means.
"You're almost in this church more than I am, Jacky," the god comments as John walks in. His steps are trembling, afraid as though the building itself has done something to harm him. The god does not share this fear, instead crosses the distance to John in long strides, face still changing. He steps up to John so they're almost touching, gleams with a dozen pairs of eyes that tower over him.
"I'll try not to make a habit of it," John mumbles, not looking the god in the eyes. The god tsks at him, moves away and drags his changing hands across the still smooth wood of the pews.
Silence falls, the god knowing what John is here for, John not willing to force the words out.
"I want to make a deal," John musters, sounding much more confident than he feels. The god stops waltzing around the church, stands with his back turned to John and waits for him to continue. John can feel his smirk from where he is standing, no matter how many smiles he goes through while wearing it.
"I know it was you who pushed James off the roof, I just want to know what it takes to save him."
He turns to John, stalking toward him. "Oh that's where you're wrong, Jacky. I didn't push James off the roof. Your dear little Jemmy ran in here, all on his own, and begged me to bring his big brother home. And who am I to not grant that wish? I told him it was going to hurt and he said fine, we shook hands and he climbed up to top of the roof. I didn't push him, he fell all by himself."
"You tricked him."
"He wanted you to come home, I gave you a reason to," he dismisses, waving his hand in the air. "Besides, weren't you here for something else?"
John huffs. "Right. I want to save James, but nobody is going to die to."
The god smiles, a vile, nefarious smirk that John hates.
"Y'know, Jack, I like you. You know how to negotiate, have just what it takes to become something like me someday."
"I'll never be like you," John yells, his throat burning at with the ferocity at which the words come out. The god just laughs, lets it die out and then stays silent for a loaded moment.
The god storms back up to him, wraps a shadowed hand around his neck, grips him so tight his toes don't touch the ground. "Don't be so sure," it hisses, throwing John back down to the ground.
"I'll make a deal that I never make," the god offers, not waiting for John to stop coughing on the floor. "I'll let James live, and no harm will come to you, but when you graduate come May and move up to the city like I know you've been planning, I want to come with you. I don't get much with your family, you don't raise idiots anymore like you used to. I crave the desperation of that city, all those lost souls looking to find something."
John clears his throat, but doesn't get up. "Is that what you do? Collect deals like stamps and put them all in a fucking binder somewhere to look at?"
"If you want an answer to that question, you're going to have to make another deal, and two deals in a day really does take a toll on the body."
"Fine, I'll take you to New York with me."
"Perfect."
John shakes hands with the god, rushes out of the church and back to the hospital, where James has already started healing. His father stares at him from the opposite side of the hospital bed, like he's trying to see what John gave away just but how he looks. John never talks to him, stays by James' side all night.
James gets released from the hospital and John graduates college. He has a going away party and moves up to the city the next day, taking the god with him like an extra suitcase.
The god does not live in John's apartment. Instead it situates itself in a secluded aisle of a bookstore, where the shelves are stacked so tight on either side that no light can get through. This allows the god to be completely in control of how much he's seen, to pass through faces at any rate and go undetected. His altar takes the shape of a small round table, an elegant chair behind it that he sits at, dark black vines curling around it.
John stays in the bookstore for a while after he finds the god in it, trying to guide weary people with little to give away from him. The god is tempting and John knows this, tries to help other people not make the same mistakes he did. It works until the god almost kills him one day, smoke in his voice as he warns John to stop and chokes him until he's near death.
Two weeks after John almost dies, he's in the bookstore again. He hasn't slept in two days and he's on the verge of passing out when he meets someone who looks like he hasn't slept in two millennia and is on the verge of death.
"Do you hear that?" The man asks, quiet as though he can't stand to be louder. John is silent for a moment, registers the god's whispering movements, calling.
"No," John lies, and the man shrugs in slow motion.
"I'mm lookin' for a job," he slurs, swaying. His eyes are half lidded and his tongue moves in his mouth like it shouldn't be there. When he blinks his eyelids move out of sync and his eyebrows seem to have a life of their own. He's a mess but his heart shines bright and John can feel it.
"Are you okay?" John asks. The man smiles, as bright as the sun.
"I'm amazing," he beams, and John falls in love right there.
His name is Alexander, and John loves it and him from the jump. He wishes he didn't, because he has a god tethered to him and there is not one part of his life that's in any way organized, but he does. Alexander is a thunderstorm, frightening and destroying everything in his wake, flooding John and tearing his walls down.
John is selfish, forgets about the god in favor of falling in love, and boy does he fall. He doesn't mention it to Alexander, knows that Alex can barely handle his life right now let alone a boyfriend, and instead chooses to suffer in silence.
He's not discreet about it. He floods his instagram with pictures of him, tweets about him almost non-stop, but Alexander doesn't notice any of it. John's tweets get drowned out in the arguments he always engages in that sometimes last for days, posts go unseen as Alexander only has an Instagram out of necessity.
Alexander is beautiful, painfully so. Millions of ideas turn their gears behind his bright brown eyes, twinkling like they're trying to shine through. The bow of his lips and the softness of his smile, the way his cheeks puff up when he grins at John, makes John's heart melt and every nerve in his body ignites. His hands, thin and bony, knuckles jutting out of his skin, writer's hands. John loves to look at him, to revel in everything Alexander is, blessed that he gets to look at such a beautiful person even if he will never get to love him.
Loving Alexander is difficult. He doesn't take care of himself, works too hard. He somehow maintains his friendship with John and his job with Washington, along with his twitter arguments and occasional dates that never go anywhere. He makes excuses and says that they couldn't handle him, that they chew too loudly or were just bad people, then claims he's looking for someone better to come along, eyes always lingering on John longer than they need to.
He lives in an awful apartment with almost nothing in it, his room just piles of books and an air mattress with thin blankets and sheets that scratch. The kitchen cabinets are filled with popcorn and granola bars, tubs of coffee that he has sorted by how much energy they'll give him when he's desperate. His fridge is full of beer and energy drinks, leftovers from meals probably left half eaten weeks ago. It's depressing and makes John worry, but Alexander acts as if it's healthy.
"How did you ever get through college like this?" John questions the first time he sees the vacancy in Alex's kitchen.
Alex shrugs, a laugh behind his words as he responds, "If I remembered, I'd tell you."
John works it out slowly, starts buying meals for himself but then saying he's not hungry, passing it off to Alex just so he'll eat something for once. He buys Alexander blankets for Christmas, and cuddles up next to him underneath them whenever he's asked to. It's not perfect but it's discreet and Alex appreciates it even though he doesn't say it. The way he smiles at John or hugs him close underneath the blankets that he has now is enough.
Alex kisses John for the first time on his birthday, when Alex had insisted that they don't celebrate and just stay inside John's apartment where the heating doesn't suck. John agreed, but he still places a cupcake with a candle on top next to Alexander's laptop and sits down next to him on the floor, giving him a cheesy smile that he hopes doesn't look too hideous.
"You didn't have to," Alex says, hands pausing on the keyboard.
John nudges him. "It's your birthday, of course I did."
He doesn't say anything for a long time. The wax drips and falls onto the icing, almost down to the wick when Alex blows it out and kisses John in the same breath. John kisses back, imagined this too many times to not be prepared when it happened.
John wants as much of Alexander as he can get as quick as he can get it. He wants to be able to wrap around Alexander, to harness everything he is and just love him for it all, to weave Alexander into his life, to make it their life as soon as possible.
"I'm not moving in with you," Alex tells him early one morning. John watches him as he moves, searching the room to find his shirt from the night before, the morning light contouring his features.
"You didn't even think," John says back. Alex stops, crawls back onto John's bed and hovers over his face, hair tickling John's cheeks.
"Make me an argument, Laurens."
John thinks for a moment, leans up to kiss him. "For starters, I have a real bed. One that doesn't deflate when you sit down on it."
"It's not that bad," Alex shrugs, shaking hair out of his eyes.
John laughs. "It's terrible! Absolutely the worst thing you have ever made me sleep on."
"Well maybe if you weren't so used to Egyptian cotton thread sheets and memory foam then you would be okay with it," Alex mumbles, sitting up on John's stomach and crossing his arms. John grins and leans up to kiss his bare shoulder before lying back down, hands resting on Alex's hips.
"I have a heating system that works," John points out, and Alex stays silent, so John continues.
"I'll make you breakfast every morning if you want, and this place is closer to Washington's, you could sleep in for once in your life." Alex isn't looking at him, blush high on his cheeks, pushes his glasses up just so he has something to do with his hands.
John sits up now with Alex still in his lap, kisses his neck. "You can have complete access to my state of the art coffee maker."
Alex laughs, pulls John away and kisses him. He slides off of the bed, pulls out his spare work clothes he keeps in John's closet, and rushes to put them on.
Just before he leaves, he leans across the bed to kiss John on the cheek.
"I'll think about it," he tells him, and then dashes out of the apartment. John smiles like an idiot for the rest of the day, even later when he has to show up to his own job and can't find anything there to ruin this.
Alex barely has anything to move into John's apartment when he does actually decide on it, just books and four boxes of granola bars, the half of his clothes that don't already occupy John's closet.
"We should get a plant," Alex says, "to take up room on your depressing windowsill."
John sips from his glass of water, looks over Alex's head at the empty space John ignored while decorating the place.
"Okay."
Their first houseplant is a little flower that Alex lovingly names George, and then soon there's a Philip and William, James and a Mary and Martha and a Henry III, Alex Jr. and John Jr., Eliza and Angelica, a little cactus that Alex lovingly names Burr and the smallest one they have named Peggy. Alex takes care of all of them, creates cute little schedules on when he needs to water them that he puts on the fridge with little smiley face magnets he bought online.
November swings around before John realizes, and this year his siblings insist on him coming home for Thanksgiving. John tried to make excuses, but they were never good at compromising, so John books the flight and lets Alexander drape himself over his lap and complain about him being gone for three days. John smiles down at him, kisses his nose and says he'll be back before he knows it, that he'll talk to him as much as he can. Alex rolls his eyes but gets off of him, drags him off to their bed to go to sleep before he has to sleep alone.
The god comes back to John on the morning he leaves, a weight so immense on his shoulders that John falls down in the middle of his hallway, has to lie there for a moment before getting his breath back. It feels like smoke choking him from the inside out, wrapping around his throat and constricting. He all but crawls into the elevator with his bag, coughing once he finally gets in. He can hear the god's laugh echoes in his head, doesn't leave until he gets home.
The church burned down that summer, but nobody told John. His father smiles for the first time in John's life and claps him on the back as they look at the pile of rubble where the church once stood, as though to say they were free. John smiles back but it doesn't meet his eyes, walks away from his father and into his room, where the god is waiting.
Black vines stretch across the expanse of John's room, across everything he owns. They grow faster than John can rip them down, sometimes wrapping around him while he sleeps, digging into his skin like they're trying to grow inside his body, and John can't handle it. He watches them grow in the mornings when he's too uncomfortable to sleep, sees them as the reach across his closed door and trap him inside.
Alex is the only thing that can make it stop. He calls John early in the morning when he first gets up, and the vines move off of him, curling up and away from his body and letting him breathe again. The god sees this, studies John carefully with its obsidian eyes, twenty leering grins crossing over him.
The day he's set to come home, he gets a call saying Alexander's been shot. The god laughs, hideous cackling that rattles John's brain almost as much as the phone call itself.
John switches flights, makes it home as soon as he can, forgets almost everything he owns in his bedroom, but none of it matters. Not even the weight of the god coming back over him can slow him down from getting to Alexander, hoping he's alive, praying to a god he's never been sure of, hoping that the god he knows doesn't answer his prayers.
He gets to Alexander in three hours, cries when he sees him lying there. He's hooked up to a dozen machines, oxygen mask attached to his mouth and nose. Black lines, like vines, stretch over his skin where he was shot.
This time when John goes to the god, it takes the form of a woman he's never met. She looks familiar, almost like Alexander if he didn't know better, dark hair falling down in waves. She doesn't look a day over forty, laugh lines faint, wrinkles on either side of her eyes just now showing up. She smiles and her face shifts, like she isn't made to wear the role she takes on. Her eyes still shine like the gods but John finds that he's okay with it, could willingly sell his soul to this woman just find a lucky penny on the street.
"Hello, John," she greets, voice soft. She smooths her hands over the marble table, pushes her hair out of her eyes and asks, "What are you here for?"
He turns sheepish, almost losing his his words. "Alex, my boyfriend, got shot yesterday, and I want to make a deal to save him."
She beams at him. "It's a noble thing to sacrifice something for someone you love, but are you sure this is what you want to do? Love is strong, I admit, but in turn it makes you weak."
"What did you do to get here?" John asks. He's forgotten that this is still the god, that under this woman's face lies the thing that took his mother from him, that made his father the way he was. It pushed his brother off of the roof and killed an innocent woman hired to take care of them.
The woman picks up a glass of lemonade from the side of the chair and drinks it, sets it down on the marble table in front of her. She smiles, bittersweet, soft.
"I sacrificed my life for my son's," she chokes out. A tear falls down her cheek but she quickly wipes it away. "Are you willing to sacrifice your life for Alexander's?"
"Yes," John responds before she even finishes the question. The woman laughs, takes another sip from her glass of lemonade and drops it to her side, but John never hears it crash to the ground.
"Let's make a deal, John." She holds her hand out, smile turning wicked as John shakes it. She watches him as he stands up but doesn't walk away, wipes his sweaty hands on the fabric of his jeans.
"What happens now?" He asks. He knew what he was doing when he made the deal to save John, agreeing that the god would come with him here , but it's only in this moment that he realizes he never specified what he was giving up, whether he was actually dying or not.
The god's eyes glint and its grin gets wider as it says, voice once again like smoke, "I will not tell you what you sacrificed, but you will live to see him happy."
John is a fool.
He makes the deal and Alex gets better, a miracle recovery. A doctor tells him that with his medical past, Alexander's chance of survival was rare, explains that he was sick as a child, but recovered unexpectedly then too. John stares at him, still asleep in his hospital bed, and thinks of the woman he shook hands with. They have the same face, it's not difficult for John to make the connection.
Alex comes home the next afternoon, collapses on their bed and groans at how soft it is and how much he's missed it. John laughs, climbs into bed next to him and kisses down his spine before cuddling up next to him, glad to have Alexander alive and in his arms again.
Everything works out for John for a while. Things go great at his job, Alexander only improves, starts sleeping at normal hours, still makes time to handle his job and make dates with John. He draws up a new watering schedule for the plants and rotates them so that the ones the need the most sunlight in the winter get it, makes a separate schedule saying when he has to rotate them again.
John comes home from work to Alex watering them all, putting Burr in beside Peggy and moving George behind Angelica. John stands next to him, leaning on the counter and leaning on him. Alex grins, leaning back on him.
"I met a new guy at my work today," Alex comments. John makes a noise to say he's listening, reaches up and nudges Henry III so he's not almost falling in the sink.
"He's fucking annoying," he continues, standing up and going to open the fridge. "Washington says that he's necessary, a valuable part of the firm , as if he's not the absolute worst person to ever grace the world."
"Does this person have a name?" John asks. Alex scoffs, takes a bowl of grapes out of the fridge and pops them in his mouth like they're the annoying ones.
"Thomas Jefferson! He sounds like a fucking tank engine," He mutters around the mouthful of grapes. John chuckles and steals one, avoids the daggers Alex shoots him.
John is forced back home again for Christmas, and the this time when the god comes to him he's ready, doesn't affect him beyond a cough and his heart racing for a few seconds.
The god doesn't loom over him this time. It sits in the corner of the room, faces still shifting, vines growing on blanketing John now instead of strangling him. John questions why it doesn't just go back to being Alex's mom, and the god laughs, deep and strangling.
"The closer I get to you, or you to me, the weaker I get. It makes it harder to settle on a form around someone with so much power," it says, bitter. John stares at it, can't decide on whether it's joking or not, rolls over in his bed and falls asleep.
He gets home the day after Christmas, and their apartment looks like a hurricane hit it. Papers are everywhere, paintings tilt sideways on the wall. Alexander's clothes lie discarded on the ground, in the sink, one of his shirts is wrapped around the light fixture in their dining room. Empty mugs pile up in the sink next in front of their plants, which are still rotated according to schedule.
He finds Alex passed out on their bedroom floor, run out of energy before he could even make it to the bed. A million terrible scenarios pass through his mind before Alex wakes up, yelps and then slides on his back away from John, not yet registering who he is. John is crying now, so afraid that Alexander was dead, that his deal hadn't gone through, that this is what John gave away when he shook her hand.
"John!" Alex smiles, adjusting his glasses on his nose. "I'm sorry you had to see this. I was going to clean up yesterday but I've been asleep since," he cracks his back and looks up at John, "yesterday."
"You're fine," John mumbles, looking around the room. Aside from Alex on the ground, the room is just as he left it. The bed is still made, not touched since John left, the piece of paper he taped to the table with a note on it gone untouched and unread.
Alex stumbles to his feet and drags his hands through his hair. "Let me just clean this up," he says, leaving the room.
"I can help."
"No, please, let me." He trips on his way out the door but lies and says he's fine, spends four hours cleaning the house while John sits on their bed waiting for him.
Alex barely sleeps when John is back. He goes back to his life before they were dating, living off of coffee and power naps that don't help him, chugging energy drinks and trying to act like this is a healthy way to live. John tries to help but he insists he doesn't want it, goes to work earlier and kisses him goodbye, doesn't come home until late, sometimes not at all. John tries to get him to come home but when he does they fight, screaming matches that they don't ever resolve.
John knows that this is part of the deal he made, starts to realize when their plants start to die, even though Alexander treats them with a tenderness that he doesn't even show John anymore. They turn withered and black, their roots burst out of the pot and grow down like vines. Alex cries when they all die, tries to throw them out but the black branches are adhered to the wall and no matter how hard he pulls the don't come off.
"Let me see them," John instructs, moving Alex to the side. Alex grumbles, backs away from John like he's poison. John touches the roots of the plant and then tears them off, meeting almost no resistance. Alex looks at him like he isn't human and takes the plants from his hand, throwing them away and leaving to go to work.
John brushes it off and goes to sleep, tries not to let the fact that Alex didn't kiss him goodbye get to him too much.
The vines cover his room when he wakes up, but the god is nowhere to be found. They seem to grow from him this time, starting where he was in the center of their bed, branching out over the floors and the walls. They wrap around one of their bedside lamps, but when John touches it, it busts and falls to pieces on the ground.
Alex can't look him in the eyes anymore. He avoids John like the plague, doesn't speak to him in the rare moments when he comes home, sleeps on opposite sids of their bed, doesn't let John within two feet of him. John doesn't say anything, knows that if he does it will ruin what's already destroyed, but he's not willing to throw it all away just yet.
Alex starts moving all of his things out of their house.
In the middle of summer, Alex comes home in tears. John gets up from the couch, sets his laptop down and tries to walk up to him, but Alex just steps back and shakes his head. John nods, sits back down on the couch as Alex sits on a chair across from him.
"Remember that guy Thomas I told you about?" Alex asks, picking at his fingernails.
"Yeah? What about him?"
"He kissed me when you were in South Carolina. It wasn't expected, up until that point I completely thought he hated me, but I guess he didn't. I've kind of been seeing him ever since then…" he trails off. John feels like he can almost hear his heart shatter in front of him, like an entire world is crashing down inside of his body and Alexander doesn't even fucking care.
"Are you kidding me?" John's voice comes out scratchy, burning his throat, like trying to breathe when you're drowning.
"I'm sorry John, I know you deserve better than m-"
"Of course I deserve better! It's been three years and this is how you fucking treat me? You isolate me for weeks, Alexander, and then you come home for the first time in four days and fucking say you're cheating on me? What the fuck?" He's yelling now, watching how Alexander flinches as his voice gets louder and hating it but not being able to stop it.
"I'm sorry, John," Alex chokes, still sitting on the chair, eyes cast down at the floor.
"Have you been planning to leave me this whole time?" John questions, words cracking.
"Most of my stuff is already at Thomas' apartment," he mutters, "I came over here to tell you and then take the rest of my stuff so I won't be a bother to you anymore."
John sniffs, tears falling down his face. "Fine, go," he says, but he doesn't mean it. Alex walks down into the hall, carries a huge box out of John's apartment and slams the door behind him.
The vines grow everywhere after Alexander leaves. Wherever John is, they stretch and ramble outwards, wrapping around every available surface until John can't recognize his own apartment anymore. He stands in place for once second and an entire jungle sprouts from the space he occupied. The vines don't touch him like they used to, instead moving as to avoid him, like they're afraid of what will happen.
John goes to the god, fists clenched, angry blush across his skin. He stomps into the dark aisle of the bookstore, slams his hands down on the table and stares the creature in it's gleaming eyes.
"I want answers about you," he says. The god looks surprised, lights a cigarette and takes a drag, watching as the smoke curls up and then disappears.
"What are you willing to give for them?"
He pauses, tries to act like he hasn't been thinking about this. "My memories."
The god puts out his cigarette on John's hand, but he doesn't feel it, doesn't even flinch away at the sight of it. The god's eyes glint for a moment before he chuckles and relaxes back in his chair, less vines covering it than before.
"You can't want both sides of the deal, Jacky," the god sneers.
"Too fucking bad," he spits. "I want my memories of Alexander gone, and I want answers about you."
"Sorry, but that's not how it works. I will, however offer you something else." This is the seconds
"What is it?"
"I grow tired of this form, Jack. Shifting is confusing, so many faces, it gets tiring . You, though, you have a good form. You have everything it takes for me to become you," the god comments. Horror paints John's features as the words come out of its mouths. He falls backwards, scrambling out of the bookstore and back to his apartment.
He goes back to South Carolina, trying to get away from everything that reminded him of Alexander, and finding that was the only place he had to go. He was completely alone aside from his family, who felt more like ghosts in his life than actual people. They pass through each other knowing they're family, but not showing it, not feeling it. John could call them roommates and make himself believe that, look his father in the eyes and feel like this man was a stranger he had never seen before.
He visits his mother's grave when he's there. He buys yellow and pink flowers, but by the time he gets to the cemetery they're already dead. He puts them on her stone anyway, hoping the sentiment helps her enough.
It hurts sometimes, when John thinks about his mother. In the past few years of his life he almost forgot, Alexander and the god tethered to him providing their own sort of distractions, but standing and staring at her name carved into the smooth marble strikes him in a way that's almost staggering. What would she think of him now?
The god is there at the cemetery with John, but it doesn't say anything. Its faces shift, not quite as sharp as they were years ago. It's getting weaker like it said it was, and John wonders what happens when a god dies, he's terrified of what happens when a god dies and it's connected to you.
John stays for a few minutes and then turns away, the grass dying at his feet. The god sees, eyes shining, mouth turning up into its wicked grin, menacing laugh escaping out of its archaic form, coming out like cold air that blows before a tornado hits.
Martha and him sit in the study as rain pours outside, the windows rattling. The tea that their mother used to drink sitting in steaming mugs on the table between them. John has a book in his hands but he's not reading it, phases in and out of awareness.
He had dreams of taking Alexander here someday, but always ended up not doing it. John has grown accustomed to the eerie backdrop that haunts their house, he's aware that other people would never understand.
The burned church in the backyard is familiar now, the rooms left abandoned to collect dust like museum pieces. All traces of a functional family ever living inside their house had gone away. His siblings and father just roamed the house like they were guests in it, afraid to touch anything as they might break it, afraid to do anything as they might break.
Martha seems to be focused on her own book, but her eyes peer over at John above the pages, studying him.
"You look different," Martha says in the silence. John snaps back to attention, turning his bookpage to make it look like he was lost. A character he doesn't know killed someone, but that's neither here nor there to him.
"How?" John asks.
He was expecting a comment about the dark circles under his eyes, or the way his skin seems to cling to his cheekbones and make him look like he's been dead for two centuries. He thought she would mention how his spine slumps, how his hair is thinning or how he doesn't smile anymore.
"You look like mom," she whispers, "the day after Mary was born."
Nothing could have prepared him for that. He goes back to the city the next day.
His apartment seems emptier when he walks in, all traces of Alexander gone. He came when John was gone, took everything he ever put in their apartment, right down to the magnets he put on the fridge. His key sits on their kitchen table, the ring bent and warped like it was ripped off of the key ring.
John doesn't even touch the key, just throws his bag down and trudges off to his room. It used to be their room, their bed, their apartment , but it wasn't anymore. Alex found someone better, abandoned John to pick up the pieces of what he left behind. Alexander was a thunderstorm, destroyed everything in his wake, flooded John and tore his walls down, didn't stay to rebuild what he took out.
He collapses onto the sheets, their sheets , sleep hitting him like a truck. He wonders why Alexander waiting until now to give the key back and take everything, falls asleep before he can think of a plausible answer.
He finds it when he wakes up. Thomas and Alexander are engaged, only four months into their relationship, and John feels his insides twist.
Thomas posts a picture of Alexander, focused on him with leaves falling around him in rich yellows and bright oranges and deep reds. Alex stares at them, wonder in his eyes, mouth parted. His hands are shoved in the pockets of a designer jacket, old scarf tucked into it. His dark hair falls down in waves to his shoulders. There's a paragraph underneath the photo, something about how wonderful Alexander is and how lucky Thomas is that he has him and now has the pleasure of marrying him.
Alexander's is much more his own style, a blurry picture taken with his shaky hands, Thomas' head thrown back in what's probably the most annoying laugh John could ever hear. It's the paragraph below it that hurts John most. It's written almost like poetry, beautiful words depicting their relationship as if John hasn't spent more time debating over which socks to buy then they've spent dating. It's beautiful though, emotional and gut wrenching and killing John in the worst way.
The last sentence at the bottom of the paragraph is what hurts the most, though. It feels like it was put there just to hurt him, as though Alex knew he'd be looking at this picture, reading every god forsaken word just to have it to amount to that sentence.
We had some rocky beginnings, the two of us, but I'm so happy that I get to spend the rest of my life with you.
John screams. An evil, screeching sound that forces its way out of his throat. The lamp he replaced on his bedside table busts, falling to pieces, the ceramic slicing his cheekbone, but he doesn't feel it. He can't feel anything past his own unadulterated rage, molten lava coursing through his veins.
They had rocky beginnings. Alex sums up John sacrificing his life to save him, making a deal with a god just so he could fucking cheat on him and leave, as a rocky beginning . John doesn't know how Alex can live with himself, with this marriage he's going into that started as an affair and will hopefully end with one. John wants revenge, he wants to scream again.
Vines burst out from everywhere, trapping him in his room, covering up the windows. His hands shift and switch and change form but he's too angry to notice. He's submerged in darkness before he knows it, almost rips his door off of its hinges trying to get out. He catches his reflection in the mirror by the front door, eyes dark, shining.
He's going to end this.
His hands slam down on the marble table with enough force to break it. The god jumps, cigarette almost slipping from between its fingers.
"What did the woman give up?" He asks. "The woman who came to me when I saved Alex, what did she do?"
The god sighs, smoke blowing out. "She was his mother, but you already knew that. Her name was Rachel, and she didn't make a deal, but a transfer. She gave all of what was left of her life force to him, and that was enough to get him through his sickness. I liked her," he responds, voice sad.
"How did you even get to her? Alex grew up in the Caribbean." Vines grow from where his hands are still on the table, and the god watches them and groans, weak and helpless like it physically pains it.
"I wasn't always in a church in South Carolina," the god answers, wheezing. John accepts the answer, wants to get what he came here for over and done with as soon as possible.
John stands up straight this time, clears his throat. "Why did you want my mom's life?"
The god smirks, eyes shining just like when John was seven years old, and it took the shape of his father and ruined his life from that moment onward.
"Your mother had so much life to hand over. She had five children to raise, grandchildren to meet. Alexander was going to be her son-in-law, and she would love him like he was one of her own. She would've been so happy and love when she died, around her family that she remembered and loved."
"The thing is, John, I accept most things in the deals I make. Memories, houses, thoughts, jobs, but with a mother, I'll always the take her life. It makes their children vulnerable, makes them easier to control. You, for instance, didn't even blink when you made your first deal, traded away your freedom for your brother's life like it was the most natural thing in the world. Look at you now, Jacky."
"Okay," John whispers, if only to get the god to stop speaking about the deals he's made. He's not proud of them, but they happened, and John can't take them back now.
The god puts its cigarette out on the table, crosses its legs and turns towards John. "So, now that I've given you answers, are you here to make another deal or are you just visiting?"
After years of seeing it on the god's face, John replicates it perfectly. He grins, wicked, green eyes shining in the dark of the bookstore aisle. His voice comes out like smoke and chokes the god, the vines shifting as he speaks.
"Not quite."
John never thought that he'd kill a god, because usually that's not how people expect their life to turn out, but once he does he thinks that it's always led up to this. From the moment John saw it, shifting and dark and terrifying, it started him on the track to this, to the god's form disintegrating at his feet. A crack runs through the marble table, the chair creaks. Vines wrap around them, and John only grins wider.
He can feel the power he takes on settle into his body, in between the joints of his bone, seeping into his skin and radiating off of him. He flexes his fingers and the world bends at his will, the ground humming underneath his feet. Vines comes up and wrap around his hair like a crown, his eyes shining and reflecting off of the spine of the books.
He sits down at the old chair, smooths his hands over the table, finger dragging down the fracture. He understands that this is the same marble his mother died on, the same one that he found her on, but he can't find it in him to care.
John moves from the bookstore after one week, never stays in the same place for longer than a month. It makes him more difficult to find, which makes stories of him rare, meaning more people are willing to fall into the chair he places in front of him and sell their souls for something that isn't worth it.
His deals, unlike the god's before him, are based on vengeance. He thrives on it, on people who come back to undo deals already made by others. Men who ask for John to kill their wives and mistresses who come and ask for recently-turned widowers to leave them alone. A mother of three comes to him asking for a safe fourth pregnancy, and John agrees but asks for her life with a glint in his eyes.
John has lost count of how long he's been a god by the time Alexander shows up. He hides in the shadows and Alex approaches, not ready to face this any time in the next millennia.
Alex has changed since the last time John saw him. His face is bright, healthy, like someone has finally gotten him to eat normally. The dark circles under his eyes have gone away, his facial hair is neat and rather attractive, if John was focusing on that, which he wasn't. He wears designer clothes now, soft sweater and pleated pants, a coat made of fabric that looks like it cost more than John's college tuition.
His stupid fucking gold wedding band is wrapped around his finger, shiny as though he just slipped it on his finger yesterday. John wants to be okay with it, to be over it and stop wasting his life thinking about human beings who will be dead far before John will be, but he can't. He doesn't admit that, would rather relive Alexander breaking up with him before he ever admits that he's still bothered by it.
"I heard that you could help me," he calls out.
"With what?" John asks, disguising his voice, like smoke. He knows Alexander is here for Thomas, and John should be shifting into the shape of Thomas' father, but in this case he thinks it best to stay as it is.
"My husband, Thomas, is sick. There's a high chance he won't live and I don't want to lose him. He's my whole life. I've never loved anyone as much as I love him," he whispers. Alex is on his knees now, hands folded on the marble table, praying to the wrong god.
John walks out to the table, doesn't sit in the chair just stares at Alex begging. Alex would have never done this for him, never would have sacrificed one hair on his head for John, and just that thought is enough to make him feel as human as he used to be.
"If I was younger, that would have killed me," he comments, his real voice this time. Alex's eyes snap open and he staggers back, falling on his ass, not believing his eyes.
"John?"
"What do you want?," John asks, doesn't want to deal with this. Alex keeps staring at him, eyes wide. John understands; he looks different now, his cheekbones are higher, eyes bright, almost blinding with green light. He looks scarier, he supposes, his features sharp and haunting.
"How, how did you get here?" Alex questions. He's sitting on the ground now, ignoring the chair next to him.
"I was an idiot. I fell in love with selfish humans that crushed me, left me with nothing and it killed me inside," John spits, making sure Alexander feels the heat in his words.
"I'm sorry."
John laughs, admiring how Alexander coughs at it. "No, you're not. You never were, Alex. Now, your husband is sick?"
Alex is crying now, doesn't even try to stop it as he whispers, "You're my only hope, John."
"Wow. Ever since we broke up you've really gotten pathetic." Alex slumps, spine cracking just like it used to, and John gives in.
The only person John cares about as an actual god is Alexander, and he doesn't even care about himself enough to be angry about it.
"I'll grant your wish, but we have to seal the deal somehow," John lies. He shook hands with the god the first time he made a deal, as did his mother, but he knows it's not a requirement. He knows this and still says it, because he's already a god how much more dead can he get?
Alex looks confused, but nods, and John can see the glow of his own eyes flicker for a moment before continuing as if this isn't going to break him all over again.
Kissing Alexander after all the years that passed hurts, but not as much as it would if he were human. His emotions are dulled, muffled, as a god, but it doesn't stop him from feeling how much Alex does actually put into it, how he still kisses like he did that first time, on his birthday, soft and sweet and tempting.
"You're just as bad at kissing as you were back then," John says. Alexander flinches at the insult but stays silent. John revels in the quiet surrender.
Silence settles between them and John just stares at him, letting Alex drink in everything he is now. Alex breaks their eye contact and swallows before getting up to leave, turning just before he does.
"What price did I agree to pay for this?" he asks, fear crossing over his eyes. He thinks he's going to die.
John cracks a smile. "I will not tell you what you sacrificed, but you will live to see him happy."